121–130 of 162 posts
"It would culminate the ancient human quest for knowledge, which began when the first of our ancestors asked, "Why?"" I'm always baffled when I read these kind of quotes, especially coming from such smart people. Do they just forget that our theories are models of reality? I personally believe that there are no wave functions or vibrating membranes out there, as there are no "triangles". These are just names for our…
It's important to avoid conflating string theorists with all theoretical physicists. Plenty of people in particle physics either don't believe in string theory or don't think it can make useful predictions any time soon, even if it were assumed true. Furthermore, the vast majority of people called "string theorists" don't even work on traditional string theory day to day, but on more concrete ideas that have been par…
It should really be called String Hypothesis. Theories in science are generally for something that's near 100% proven.
From the view of a philosopher of science string theory isn’t even a hypothesis as a hypothesis needs to be testable
It's important to avoid conflating string theorists with all theoretical physicists. Plenty of people in particle physics either don't believe in string theory or don't think it can make useful predictions any time soon, even if it were assumed true. Furthermore, the vast majority of people called "string theorists" don't even work on traditional string theory day to day, but on more concrete ideas that have been par…
Well I’m not reading Feynman’s take because he is dead right now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There seems to be lots of forward progress in physics, e.g. in condensed matter physics, quantum computing The theory of quantum computing is based on real physics, unlike string theory. But we have no idea if or when we will be able to build a quantum computer that actually calculates something useful. So far the progress has been only in theory. Edit: To downvoters, let's make a bet: In the next 18 years, no one…
Progress does not mean "Commercial success". Your bet is like hearing "my kid seems to be making lots of progress on their bike", and responding with "I bet he'll never cycle around the world in 18 years".
This guy really hates the search for grand unified theory, wow. What a miserable fellow.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
His statement can be true if you restrict it to "quantum gravity" jobs (of which string theory is one of many approaches, abeit the overwhelmingly most popular one). The other jobs you're talking about just don't try to answer the questions that string theory purports to addresses.
Despite its drawbacks string theory may actually be our best theory of quantum gravity, perhaps even enough to justify its hiring ratio relative to other quantum gravity theories. Maybe string theory has been treated in a balanced way all along.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So as long as there is one physicist on the right side of the fence the “field” is somehow in the know...? Would you be willing to extend that kind of reasoning to the “pop scientists”? I often wish Feynman (or anyone of his kind really) was still here. Science nowadays seems more and more like one big appeal to authority...
Something that most people don't understand is that most physicists won't talk to the public. What you hear as a layman is usually the few people who have a public axe to grind and bears no resemblance to the majority of the field. When I was in physics in the early 2000's, the general feeling was that it's a probably nonsense, but having someone out at the far end of the mathematical spectrum like that in your theor…
I think what I’m objecting to is that as the discoveries within physics become less and less impactful, the “field” seems to turn more and more inwards. Also, egos seem to expand approximately proportionally to the inverse of the utility of their work...
It's important to avoid conflating string theorists with all theoretical physicists. Plenty of people in particle physics either don't believe in string theory or don't think it can make useful predictions any time soon, even if it were assumed true. Furthermore, the vast majority of people called "string theorists" don't even work on traditional string theory day to day, but on more concrete ideas that have been par…
The advantage of being a mathematician is that the unifying theories for QM and GR just that, mathematical techniques to unify QM and GR. Unfortunatly, if you are a physicist, I assume your grants at some point will have the words "predictions" or "experiments" in them. But for someone focused on mathematics, string theory, quantum loop gravity (if that is what it's called) and all the others become tools and objects…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's just not true. Look at the statistics for hiring faculty in theoretical high energy physics [1]. String theory was never more than half, and usually much less than that. (It is true, though, that for a while they had a near monopoly on pop physics. But that's totally different from physics.) [1] http://www.particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/rumor/doku.php?id=st...
His statement can be true if you restrict it to "quantum gravity" jobs (of which string theory is one of many approaches, abeit the overwhelmingly most popular one). The other jobs you're talking about just don't try to answer the questions that string theory purports to addresses.